Why Do Local Officials Bet on the Strong? Drawing Lessons from China’s Village Redevelopment Program

The Village Redevelopment Program is an ambitious policy which attempts to reshape the physical living environment in the countryside. In implementing the policy, local officials nationwide largely subsidize wealthy villages. Based on fieldwork conducted in two counties in different provinces, this article points to a politics of command as the main reason. It concludes that superiors, through the normal Chinese mechanisms for promoting new programs, have left local officials with little choice but to subsidize wealthy villages. This finding has implications for China’s governance in a wider sense.